Chapter 5 - The Phantom Informant
With the grid temporarily blinded, Donovan received a encrypted message on his personal, encrypted burner phone. The alias read 'The Architect'.
“If you want to save the girl and the core, meet me at the abandoned industrial shipyard, Pier 4. I have the stabilizer Barnaby needs.”
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Donovan suspected a trap, but looking at Barnaby’s fading blue lights, they had no choice. They arrived at the foggy, rusted shipyard at midnight. Out of the shadows stepped a woman in a lab coat, her face lined with exhaustion. It was Dr. Aris, the co-creator of Barnaby and a close friend of Emily’s parents.
"They aren't dead, Emily," Dr. Aris blurted out immediately, bringing an instant surge of hope to the little girl’s eyes. "Your parents were taken alive. Victor Vance is keeping them in the subterranean labs beneath Chronos Headquarters. They need your father to reverse-engineer Barnaby's empathy core because without it, the military AI models keep self-destructing."
